Machine Translates Thoughts Into Speech

An anonymous reader points to this explanation of a brain-machine interface for real-time synthetic speech production, which has been successfully tested in a 26-year-old patient. From the article: "Signals collected from an electrode in the speech motor cortex are amplified and sent wirelessly across the scalp as FM radio signals. The Neuralynx System amplifies, converts, and sorts the signals. The neural decoder then translates the signals into speech commands for the speech synthesizer."

Re:This could be really bad for men

[johncadengo]

I know you are kidding, but surely there is a difference between the part of our brain that makes words into sounds, and that part of our brain that entertains thoughts.

Re:Volunteer?

[DynaSoar]

They keep referring to the patient in the test as a 'volunteer' but also state that he was "paralyzed except for slow vertical movement of the eyes." So he what? Signed the release forms by slowly looking up and down? I am guessing they mean volunteer as in 'his guardian(s) "volunteered" him'.

[irony]
Why those bastards! And to think, they could have preserved the poor guy's rights and left him in his locked-in state, unable to communicate. That's the way God obviously intended him to be, and they had no right to play God for him. No doubt the poor guy's first 'words', since he would have recognized his rights were violated, would be "unplug me".
[/irony]